Different thoughts about fear…

What do you believe?

“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” H. Jackson Browne

“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.” James F. Bymes

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Marcus Aurelius

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson

“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”Don Miguel Ruiz

“Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.” Dorothy Thompson

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“One of the first things a relationship therapist learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.” Gay Hendricks

“You will fear the darkness only to the extent that you yourself are not providing light.” Marianne Williamson

If you did not read yesterday’s post about creating a new belief about fear, read it here.

Fear – creating a new definition changes everything!

Fear. It is something we are all familiar with. We have all felt fear at different times in our lives and for different reasons. Some fears are short lived and some are chronic and thus debilitating. I want to have you join me as we explore fear.

What does Fear mean to you?

Here you can read some common definitions of fear from Dictionary.com and Wikipedia. Basically they say fear is a distressing emotional response to threat.

My friends at The Red Tomato Fitness had this to say in a recent blog post:

When I was a kid we used to make up all sorts of games. In particular, we would stand on the monkey bars at recess and jump and see how far we could land. Children are fearless when it comes to their physical limitations. When they see a challenge instead of saying, “Oh, I can’t jump that far”, they say “Lets see how far I can jump.”  We have to learn to think like a child, we have to learn how to play again. So the 2nd part of this answer, which I have already touched on it a bit, is FEAR. Most of the time we let fear get in the way of us overcoming a physical challenge.  As we grow older, and we haven’t done a particular task in a long time, we become scared.  We have to learn to over come our fears of physical activity.

I do not believe kids are fearless, but rather they have a different definition of fear than most adults. Think about the way kids view fear: they are on top of the monkey bars 6 feet in the air and they get excited and decide to jump! Most adults get scared and would quickly climb down. What is the difference? It comes down to belief and our working definition of fear. Adults believe fear is telling them to stop, slowly back away, and hide. Kids believe fear is telling them to get alert, excited, and ready to have fun. How would your life change if you adopted the kids belief system?

Kids believe FEAR means: Feeling Excited And Ready

All the physiological responses to fear our body has are not to get us ready to run and hide but to get us ready to grow, expand and soar like eagles. Excitement and passion are the source of life and fear with this new definition becomes a source of life rather than contraction and death.

Today’s experiment: Adopt a kid’s belief in fear for a day, week, or month and see what happens. Have fun!

Eating animals is making us sick

If you are not aware of what you are putting in your mouth and body, I would strongly suggest you do some research and find out…because if you eat like the average American, you are eating yourself sick!

Ever wonder what the #1 cause of global warming is?

Where the swine flu originated?

What really caused that 24-hour “flu” you got last month?

What is a huge contributer to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens?

Find out all that and more by reading this great blog.

Got Pain?? Time for some Medication

Wonderful blog post from John Cattermole, clinic director and owner of Egoscue Phoenix. Enjoy.

Got pain?? Time for some medication.

This may be hard to believe coming from an egoscue therapist, especially since Pete Egoscue declares in his first book that those who reach for an aspirin when they hurt are short circuiting responsibility for their health.

But the reality is pharmaceuticals are good for us. No… not the ones produced by well meaning scientists. Rather the ones made by the most exquisite pharmacy…YOUR BODY.

That’s right your body is able to produce the chemicals that fight cancer, provide pain relief, give you a sense of well being and enable you to breathe whether you think about it or not. It’s a fantastic creation.

But this begs the question…if it can fight cancer and win etc…then why do some loose the fight?

The straightforward answer is….(find out here)

Setting Your Body Free: An Information Revolution

By Deepak Chopra

Jeremiah Sullivan

How would you feel if you were told you had won $1 million? What if you only had a month to live? Information has the power to make you ecstatic or depressed in an instant. Deepak Chopra shows you how to gain control over the information and set your body free.

Why does bad news make us sad? Why does getting a raise make us want to celebrate? Not many people have thought about these questions. They seem too simple, yet in a way they are deeply mysterious.

In fact, the right answer can set your body free, while the wrong answer can prove to be an inescapable trap.

Right now, brain science can tell us part of the story. When someone tells you a piece of bad news (“Your bank account has been cleared out”), a different style of brain chemistry is activated from when you hear good news (“Congratulations, you got the job”). It isn’t possible to have an emotion of any kind without various neurotransmitters and other so-called messenger molecules that turn words into brain activity.

Brain researchers have been so excited by this discovery—that the brain “lights up” with every new experience—that only a few people have said: “Wait, you didn’t hit on the answer. You made the mystery harder to solve.”

And here’s why: How did mere words turn into chemicals? Information streams into your body every second. Not just “You got the job” or “Your bank account is empty,” but all the sights and sounds of the world. You cannot see or hear anything without the brain being activated at the chemical and electrical levels. Yet no one has the faintest idea how that magical transformation occurs. There’s enormous potential here for both good and bad. One person who gets bad news becomes devastatingly depressed while another quickly bounces back. One person becomes manic with good news and starts acting with irrational exuberance (think of the famous line from the movie Titanic: “I’m king of the world!”) while another person takes good news in stride.

Clearly you would be much better off if you had some control over the beneficial information that could transform your brain into a powerful resource for your own growth.

3 breakthroughs that can transform your life

Giving to others is the greatest gift you can give yourself

Thank you Rick for sharing this wonderful video with me. I love the message and am excited to share it. For those of you who do not know Rick Mathes, he is the clinic owner/director of Egoscue Austin and has a terrific blog called “Ramblings from the Hill Country.”

Watch the VIDEO.

Science Friday: running barefoot, exercise helps kids in school

Science Friday on NPR was great this week! Ira Flatow was talking with Daniel E. Lieberman, professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and John Ratey, Author, “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain” (Little, Brown & Company, 2008) a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. They were discussing how the human body is designed unlike any other animal on earth. And that design is perfect for running and running long distances.

The discussion also talked about how important exercise, movement and play is in brain development. They talked about schools who are keeping kids active throughout the day and how it has decreased discipline problems and improved kids focus, concentration, and grades.

The third topic I enjoyed was about how exercise effects our moods by the release of key neurotransmitters that make us happy, peaceful and content.

It is wonderful to see these discussions becoming more mainstream and hopefully impacting the way we all live our lives.

Go Play Outside, Really! – Dr. Weil’s advice

This is from Dr. Weil’s Daily Blog:

Lost your focus? Do what Mom advised: Go play outside!

Specifically, go walk in nature, rather than a city. An experiment published in the journal Psychological Science gave volunteers memory and attention tests, then sent them out on a walk. Sometimes there were told to ambulate in the university’s urban home of Ann Arbor. Other times, they were instructed to walk through a nearby arboretum.

When participants returned from the nature walk, they showed a 20 percent improvement in the tests, but they showed no improvement when they returned from the urban walks.

This makes perfect sense. Our brains evolved in natural, low-noise, low-visual-contrast wilderness settings; not the relentless high-stimulation environments of our offices, technology-stuffed homes, or urban cityscapes. It is only natural that we shut down our ability to focus and take in stimuli in assaultive environments, and, conversely, replenish our ability to “open up” and focus in nature. So tell your boss – if he or she wants you to be more productive, you need to take a walk. Better yet, invite the boss to come along!

The Best Aging Secret: Make Time Your Friend

By Deepak Chopra

Jeremiah Sullivan

We’ve all been conditioned to look upon time as our enemy. This belief is wrong, but it’s so deeply ingrained that if affects even the most gifted people.

Years ago, I was riding in a car with a woman who had been labeled by the media as one of the most beautiful women in the world. She had everything, since talent and wealth were also hers, but her health tended to be fragile.

“How can I help you?” I asked her.

She looked embarrassed and didn’t want to answer. For the next few miles, she gazed wistfully out the window as the passing countryside. Then she blurted out, “How I wish I could be young again.”

I didn’t hear vanity in her words but a helpless wish, the kind any of us might have when we don’t think it can be granted.
She looked amazed when I replied, “There is a way that you can influence your aging and even begin to look and feel young once again.”

Such a statement might sound ridiculous unless you understand that aging does not have to be purely a function of time. The clock seems to be ticking off the hours, days and years. Given enough time, the ocean will wear away the shore. But human beings are privileged. Unlike a rock, which cannot defend itself against wind and water, or a machine, whose parts wear out over time, humans have a relationship with time.

And like all relationships, yours can be good or bad.

What’s your relationship with time like?

(click here to continue)

The Human Body Is Built for Distance

Monday there was a wonderful article in the New York Times about how great the human body is designed and that we are indeed designed to run and run great distances. It’s great to see people doing research and coming out challenging the widely circulating myths that our body is fragile and can’t handle things like running. I have included some highlights below.

The article starts by asking:

Does running a marathon push the body further than it is meant to go?

The conventional wisdom is that distance running leads to debilitating wear and tear, especially on the joints. But that hasn’t stopped runners from flocking to starting lines in record numbers.

But research is starting to pile up that disproves the belief that running is bad for the body:

In “Born to Run” (Knopf), Christopher McDougall, an avid runner who had been vexed by injuries, explores the world of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, a tribe known for running extraordinary distances in nothing but thin-soled sandals. Mr. McDougall makes the case that running isn’t inherently risky. Instead, he argues that the commercialization of urban marathons encourages overzealous training, while the promotion of high-tech shoes has led to poor running form and a rash of injuries.

The article goes on to say what Pete Egoscue has been saying for years:

The scientific evidence supports the notion that humans evolved to be runners.

Dr. Lieberman said. “There are so many features in our bodies from our heads to our toes that make us good at running.”

Then the big question is asked:

So if we’re born to run, why are runners so often injured? A combination of factors is likely to play a role, experts say. Exercise early in life can affect the development of tendons and muscles, but many people don’t start running until adulthood, so their bodies may not be as well developed for distance. Running on only artificial surfaces and in high-tech shoes can change the biomechanics of running, increasing the risks of injury.

And as Pete Egoscue so famously said, “We are dying of a lack of motion.” Our bodies are designed to handle long distance running and tennis and basketball and golf and every other activity you can think of…as long as we have good posture. The reason why so many runners (and golfers and tennis players and swimmers, etc.) get injured is because they no longer have good posture. You are hopefully thinking “why?”

First we must remember that our posture – the alignment of our bones – is determined by our muscle memory. Our muscle memory is a reflection of our life experience — or simply, what we have done with our bodies. We all know that our body is organic and constantly responding to our environment and that is why it’s commonly said our muscles work on the principle of “use it or lose it.” Because of our lack of motion, we fail to stimulate all our muscles causing us to develop muscle imbalances that lead to postural changes. These postural imbalances are what cause injuries, wear and tear, and pain. Correct the muscles imbalances and the posture improves and the pain goes away. Then we can once again experience the joy of movement – whether it be running a marathon, playing 18 holes of golf, or playing a game of pick-up basketball.